Tutorials / Getting value
Getting value . 4 min read
Set up your pipeline and keep it honest
A pipeline is a board of columns, and each card on it is one potential job. The column a card sits in says what has to happen next, so one glance tells you what is waiting on you.
How the pieces fit together
- Contact, the person.
- Opportunity, one potential job for that person. A card.
- Pipeline, the whole process that job moves through.
- Stage, one column, one step of that process.
So: Jane Smith is a contact. Her kitchen job is an opportunity. It sits in your Sales pipeline, at the Quote sent stage. If Jane later asks about a bathroom, that is a second opportunity on the same contact.
Build the pipeline
- Go to Opportunities.
- Click Pipelines.
- Click Create New Pipeline.
- Name it, add your stages in the order work actually happens, and click Save.
Use your own words for stages, not generic ones. If your process is Enquiry, Site visit, Quote sent, Deposit paid, In build, then those are your stages. A board that does not match how you work gets ignored within a fortnight.
Moving work along
Drag a card into the next column. It saves itself, and if an automation is attached to that stage, the move is what sets it running.
The four statuses, and the one people get wrong
- Open, still live, still being chased.
- Won, they signed or paid.
- Lost, they said no or went elsewhere.
- Abandoned, it went quiet and nobody is chasing it.
Mark things Lost or Abandoned. People avoid it because it feels like admitting failure, and the result is a board with forty dead cards hiding the three live ones. A closed card is information, a stale open card is noise.
Getting told instead of remembering
The cards do not flag themselves when they go quiet. Ask us once to set up an alert when a card sits in a stage past a number of days you choose, and the board starts chasing you instead of the other way round.